NEED WE GO BALD ?

Otago Witness, Issue 2362, 1 June 1899, Page 55

NEED WE GO BALD ?

TWO COLUMNS OF COMFORT. The nmnber of b;ild heads among men who have readied middle age ih really remarkable, and the fact cannot fail to strike one a& one looks around any church, meeting place, or theatre where men sit bareheaded.

And the age at which a man may resign hiiiis-elf to what he thinks is the inevitable seems to be getting earlier and earlier. Once .i man began to note with inward qualms the shrinking away of his hair frum his forehead, and the formation of a thin nlaca on

his crown, when he was 40 or beyond ; but now the dreaded commencement of the Daring process is often seen on heads that have not experienced 30 years. A man will say that his baldness is hereditary because his father also went bald early ; but if he will go back to his grandfather he will most probably find that the question of heredity will not hold good for more than one, or, at most, two generations Then he will blame his condition to the hairdresser's brush, and here he may possibly find an explanation. For 'a brush which has swept many scalps is liable, though it be ever so much washed, to carry the disease of one head to another.

The fashion of closely cropping men's 'hair may have a great deal to do with the decay of the hairbulbs, just as a vegetable disappointed continually in its efforts to grow, would decay at the root, if always its stalk were cut away. Every farmer knows that, when he plants corn or any crop, it is useless to expect it to flourish upon barren ground. His turnip acres are dressed with lime or soot or bonedust, his grain lands with nitrates and salt and guano, his clover with gypsum ; and so for all his crops he gives each variety the exact kind of nourishment that experience has shown him, or others, that it requires. Now, why cannot such a plan be pursued m regard to the hair?

A hair is by many supposed to be merely a kind of very fine pipe which grows out of the skin and inconveniently falls out of bald heads. It is not a tubular thing at all ; it is a shaft, solid and beautiful as any precious gem. It may either be regarded as a mineral, because its composition is mainly of mineral matters, or as a vegetable, because it grows and sucks up its nourishment in a manner very like that pursued by the" stem of a plant.

Just under the upper skin surface lies the wide expanse of sensitive, nerve-filled true skin, covered with tiny knobs that are each set in the bottom of a little pit. The knobs aro the papillre, the pits are the follicles. Upon each little papilla the. hairbulb grows, fitting upon it like a tiny bonnet. The end of the bulbous bonnet pushes out from the little hole or follicle through the scarf-skin, or layer of cells above it, and the shaft of the hair begins to elongate itself more and more until it has reached full size, when it is pushed away from the papilla by the formation of a new cap or bulb. Sometimes a tiny bacillus gets into the follicle or pit, and there it revels ; for, having a cruel jaw fitted with hooks and tentacles by whic^ it can cling, it attaches itself, like a small vampire, to the hairbulb, and sucks, sucks away at it until it has robbed it of all its juices. Sulphur is one agent that destroys it, but remedies are, as a rule, applied £oo late to stop the ravages.

There is one great cause of baldness, and it is the most hopeless, because the microbe destroys the hairbulbs and so injures the follicles -or hair-pits that the . bulbs cannot form in them again, and the papilla of the skin must remain without its busy little cap.

But the greatest of all reasons for baldness of men is found in the diet of to-day. If the bulbs are not fully destroyed by the ravages of the bacilli whose mission is to bring baldness, then a valuable diet ought to clothe the man who has a head as smooth as a billiard ball with a good shock of locks in a short time. It is noticeable that negroes have thick hair, and most uncivilised nations are remarkable for hair -growth, at least on the head.

In fact, the increase of baldness is only noticed amongst whites and those who live under enervating conditions. Of course, the white man will say, with a condescending smile, that it is his excessive brain use that has sucked away the nourishment from the hairbulbs in order to support the grey matters of his nervous system. The negro, who seldom uses his brain, does not rob his bulbs and follicles in such wise ; therefore he does not go bald, being nonintellectual.

The hair takes in all the salts it can get and forms its substances from them. The common salt of our dinner tables is one of its great sources of supply ; vegetables and fruits, all rich in salts and sulphates, are other means of supply. In this latter fact we get the key of the negro's luxuriant tresses. The blackfellow lives mainly on fruit and greenstuffs, and he ta.kes into his body abundance of natural salts, therefore his hair thrives on its abundant food. For a healthy hair has in its substance oxide of iron — when this latter substance is very" abundant the hair is red — potassium, calcium, lime, sulphur, chlorine, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and a great abundance of silica.

Silica is merely flint — it is a quartz form, and the basis, when crystallised, of most gems. It forms the shining outer skin of the bamboo, the sugarcane, and all grasses ; it is what gives them strength and firmness as well as their typical lustre.

In the shaft of the hair, thus: silicastrengthened, are found the tiny cells of colour, and oils are mingled in the colours which are determined by the predominant oxides, though iron is the chief factor in hue-making. So the oily nuts eaten by the negro will tend to preserve the dark pigments of his locks, which, by the way, are supposed to be invariably black because of the abundance of carbon ne gets in his vegetable food. The taking of cod-liver oil, then, would tend to enhance the health of the hair, or the eating of many slices of wholemeal bread and butter would do likewise.

The taking of the old-fashioned spring remedy of brimstone and treacle will restore to thg blood the sulphur it lacks, and greatly aid in feeding the starving hairbulb. Sulphur is present in the hair in just a tenth degree less than the very abundant silica ; therefore it will be seen that the> taking of some of this once-popular medicine is a necessity. The flowers of sulphur, an ounce for a penny, taken with treacle or milk will do.

AH ripe fruits contain sulphur in some degree, and sulphuric acid is present in all. Tnis combines with other acids in the blood, and neutralises or enhances them, according to the manner of its combination, therefore ifc is a vitahser of the fluid of life. The white corpuscles in the blood receive strength; and they are the scavengers of

the body. They enwrap and actually dw your" noxious microbes by absorption.

A substance that is a. destroyer of the: hair is undoubtedly alcohol. It acts in . thia way : As soon as a mineral salt soluble in alcohol is brought into contact with it, the mineral dissolves, and is unable to do its right work in the body. Instead a gas is formed, and the action is injurious.

Water contains both oxygen and hydro, ge'q, both constituent parts of the hair ; therefore to drink water or warm beverages s which contain much of Nature's drink is right if the fluid taken is to be of value to the covering of the head. A bald-headed man had better take a course of calcium, common salt, and some of the hypophosphites, not forgetting sulphur, if he would see his hair gv&w. Of course, he must take only minute quantities of these drugs, and not swallow the whole lot at once ; so he had better confine himself tc such artic^s oi food as contain them, and get them in that way elaborated for him by Chemist Nature.